Columbia University students use Cider to trick Android phones into running iOS apps

UNIVERSITY geeks have discovered a way of tricking Android phones into running Apple apps, which could change everything on your phone.

Alex Kidman National technology writer

News Corp AustraliaMay 15, 20145:50pm

THERE’S not a lot of love lost between the iOS and Android camps, and at the heart of the battle lies the applications battle.

Generally speaking, iOS runs ahead in terms of app availability, especially on tablets, but what if you could run iOS apps on an Android device?

A group of researchers at the Columbia University Department of Computer Science have done just that, developing an operating system compatibility architecture dubbed “Cider” that takes native iOS apps and effectively translate them on the fly to run on Android architecture.

It’s a far from flawless bit of software right now, which is often the case with this kind of software. Apps run slowly if at all, and it could be some time before it’s available to the general public, if at all. We can’t imagine Apple will be that happy with it, for starters.